“And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the Lord.”
That you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord. The stated purpose of the Exodus is intergenerational testimony. The events are not merely for the people present; they are for every subsequent generation who will hear the story. Psalm 78:4–7 commands telling the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, so that they in turn would tell their children, who would put their trust in God. Deuteronomy 6:20–21 imagines a child asking what these commandments mean, and the parent answering: we were slaves in Egypt. The Passover Seder to this day structures itself around this intergenerational transmission: in every generation, each person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally went out of Egypt. The plagues are not over; they are being remembered.
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
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